New Product Awards Blog

Navantis Inc. of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, won the Gold Stevie® Award for Best New Business Intelligence Solution in the new product awards categories of the 2013 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service, the world's top honors for business development, sales, contact center, and customer service professionals. The competition also features categories that recognize new products and services used by these professionals. (Entries to the 2014 edition are now being accepted - learn more here.)

Here we look at how Navantis has partnered with NBC News to advance online learning technologies.

It’s 3:00AM in the morning. A college student has a paper due at 9:00AM. In a remote farming community, a grade ten student is studying for an exam and struggling to download a required video assignment. Long after putting her own children to bed, a public school teacher is completing her lesson plan. All of these scenarios are real and all of these people expect the NBC Learn website to be available at any time of the day or night to help them meet their professional and classroom commitments.

NBC Learn is the educational arm of NBC News and is dedicated to making historic stories, images, and primary source documents available on-demand to teachers, students, and parents by providing access to more than 14,000 stories from the NBC News archives—one of the largest news archives in the world, with records dating back to the 1920s.

A State-of-the-art Call Center

NBC Learn’s hundreds of thousands of clients—teachers, students, and parents—rely on being able to access the website from a PC, MAC, or iPad, at school or at home, 24/7. They expect a site that is always available and with technical support that is always on.

Providing high-quality technical support around the clock and being able to solve every kind of issue facing every type of user was a challenge. Realizing they couldn’t do it alone, NBC Learn turned to the expert technical Call Center team at Navantis for help.

Under the leadership of Vice President Client Support Karl Weiss, Navantis operates a state-of-the-art call center incorporating voice calls, email, chat, collaboration, and remote technical assist. Navantis acts transparently so that NBC Learn clients never realize they are dealing with an outsourced team. Every call, email, and instant message is handled with care and monitored under strict Service Level Agreements.

Deep Business Insight

Navantis manages all of the case tracking and reporting, and provides deep business insight back to NBC Learn for continuous improvement.

An advanced offering that Navantis includes is usage tracking, which helps to identify schools with reduced participation. Once identified, the Navantis reach- out program encourages online training through webinars, resulting in better understanding, awareness, and increased usage of the NBC Learn offerings while also ensuring that 21st century education continues to help teachers and students improve skills and knowledge.

Building a Brighter Future

“Nobody else in our industry is able to approach the level of content and support provided by NBC Learn, making us the most competitive and compelling solution in the market today,” commented Michael Levin, Director of Sales and Technical Operations at NBC Learn. “Navantis has completed our service offering by providing a seamless experience for our community and becoming a trusted member of our team. They treat our clients with patience and respect, ensuring that no problem goes unsolved.”

Because of the work that the Navantis team continues to do, NBC Learn is able to fully meet the needs of their clients. Thousands of teachers, students, and parents are now able to streamline videos; access history on-demand; enhance lesson plans; and continue to build a brighter future with full support.

"We are delighted to be recognized for excellence in customer service and support," commented Karl Weiss on receiving the Gold Stevie Award. "The partnership with NBC Learn has enabled both of our organizations to innovate, delivering unparalleled levels of service to students, teachers and families across the country and helping to set a standard for 21st century learning."

About Karl Weiss:

Karl Weiss is a seasoned Customer Care and Services professional with over thirty years of experience in Information Services operations. Karl builds customer care environments that provide innovation aimed at driving sales, marketing, business intelligence, development, and customer service. He has earned an enviable reputation for customer service excellence and for providing complex implementation and support of large-scale network deployments for multinational clients such as Lafarge, Royal Bank, and Magna. Karl’s core operational principles are client satisfaction and delivery excellence during all phases of deployment and support. His expertise spans quality assurance, process re-engineering, software development, technical support, and design, all of which provide tremendous value to Navantis.

About Navantis:

Navantis combines strategy, design, and technology to help their clients realize new opportunities, solve business challenges, and focus on excellence in customer service and delivery. Founded in 1998, Navantis was Microsoft's Canadian Partner of the year in 2012, and is the partner channel with the most industry awards including recognition from Microsoft, CDN Magazine, and the Branham Group.